A review by jordandotcom
Tradition by Brendan Kiely

5.0

This book is so very important - so important that I stayed up until 2 am during finals week to finish reading it.

The reason this book IS so important is because it attacks the rape culture that is in society and institutions that we sometimes refuse to believe and acknowledge, and it actually written by someone whose demographic (cis white male) is the most prevalent perpetrator of these beliefs.

For a specific example as to why this is important? Let's focus on the institutional response. Most don't even need to read this to assume that it was subpar. For anyone who has doubts about this, let me tell you a story. About my own university.

So there was this girl named Brenda*, right? And a fellow student named David. David consistently harassed Brenda to the point of her blocking him on Facebook. But he didn't stop then, and actually began to harass her mother as well - asking about Brenda's father and the divorce her mother just experienced. These two are not the only victims - multiple other women on campus reached out after this occurred to share their similar experiences.

Now the natural response is: you have to report it. So she did. But before she reported it, the incidents escalated. David would corner her and force his way into her dorm room when she was only in a towel.

So after this, she reported it to her RA. The Title IX policy on this campus requires that any faculty member who receives any details regarding an event of sexual assault/harassment has to report it. Then Title IX is required to follow up. In this case, they did not.

Brenda was going to leave this behind, until David began to run for student body president. So she went public. Finally, it was ensured that the Title IX office has heard about this incident. She then filed a grievance with the Elections Committee through Student Government. David had broken five election codes, which one would think would prevent him from running. It did not, and her complaints were once again sent back to the Title IX office. She was then told it didn't matter what he did, because it was before he ran for president. So my university let a known perpetrator of sexual assault become the lead student representative.

Brenda kept pushing the investigation forward. The Title IX office did not give her any information or updates for over 4 months. Even the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights reached out to the university because of the failure to act promptly and respond.

So the tl;dr? Brenda was assaulted by David. She reported it in 2016. When David ran for student body president he got it, because the Title IX investigation DID NOT EXIST when he ran for office in 2017. Instead of promptly responding, as an institution should, it decided to favor its shining students and diversity over the traumatic experiences of one of their students. They were entirely willing to shove all of that under the rug and move forward.

This is entirely unconscionable. But almost no one at this university would have even known about it if it was as strict of an environment as in the book. We got lucky this time. But this cannot happen again. THIS is why this book matters. This is why this book is absolutely necessary. Because unfortunately, I know of more stories like this. I know of a university that accepted a transfer student while he had an ongoing Title IX investigation, not caring about this active investigation or the fact that it grinned it to a halt.

This book was amazing in being able to touch on HOW this can happen. It goes deep into the way we act and the way we think when it's not just sexual assault or rape, but merely women standing up for themselves. This book is a major fuck you to tradition, and that is what is needed now.

And if any of you want to read further for the case I discussed in length, here is the link: http://gmufourthestate.com/2018/04/29/how-a-title-ix-report-in-student-government-dragged-on-for-over-a-year/#sthash.8SGfTHXs.dpbs.

*name changed to hide identity of the student